Comment Re:Your spam solution could be abused (Score 1) 234
There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet. Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs. I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back.
It could be a tied deal: say, this user by accepting newsletter puts this 1 cent in deposit at trusted third party. User unsubscribes - this 1 cent goes back to company.
The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling).
That's a feature, not a bug. If you send email to somebody, you better have reason good enough to risk 1 cent per email. Do you want to see increase in volume of email traffic or increase in meaningfullness of communication?
I'm serious - have you heard of "tragedy of the commons" or "overgrazing" problem?
Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Not at all! I think since it would involve money, unsubscribing from a list would be actually a lot more reliable: just don't send this 1 cent anymore to get another email.
Yes, there's some additional computing overhead, but come on, the serious problem is TREATING OUR ATTENTION AS IF IT WERE FREE AND UNLIMITED RESOURCE, while it is gradually becoming more and more scarce!
It could be a tied deal: say, this user by accepting newsletter puts this 1 cent in deposit at trusted third party. User unsubscribes - this 1 cent goes back to company.
The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling).
That's a feature, not a bug. If you send email to somebody, you better have reason good enough to risk 1 cent per email. Do you want to see increase in volume of email traffic or increase in meaningfullness of communication?
I'm serious - have you heard of "tragedy of the commons" or "overgrazing" problem?
Thus the end of any free service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.
Not at all! I think since it would involve money, unsubscribing from a list would be actually a lot more reliable: just don't send this 1 cent anymore to get another email.
Yes, there's some additional computing overhead, but come on, the serious problem is TREATING OUR ATTENTION AS IF IT WERE FREE AND UNLIMITED RESOURCE, while it is gradually becoming more and more scarce!
